For Whom Would a Default Really Be a Problem?

There’s something people haven’t been discussing about the whole potential default of the United States. We hear lots of economists, bankers, businessmen and politicians talk about how horrific a default might be if our country defaults in the beginning of August. But not once have I ever heard a construction worker, an administrative assistant or the guy who empties the trash from the office ever discuss the default, other than “I heard about it on the news” and even then, they don’t really have an opinion. You might suspect the reason why they don’t comment on it or have an opinion is because they don’t know enough about it, like the really smart economists, bankers, businessmen and politicians. But I’m beginning to suspect that even if the construction workers, administrative assistants or the guy who empties the trash from the office might just not care, even if they knew and understood all of the details.

You see, the people who are shouting all doom and gloom are generally the people who are most affected by the potential doom and gloom. That would be economists, bankers, businessmen and politicians. In case you haven’t really thought about it, those positions I just mentioned don’t actually do anything to contribute anything to society. They handle money, or they handle the policies that deal with money. Physically, they don’t do anything other than figure out how to move money around. In the olden days, they were called the “money changers” and you might remember a story where some guy named Jesus threw them out of a temple, or something like that. Or maybe it was Noah. Or Moses. There might have been an ark. Or was that what Indiana Jones was looking for. Either way, the point is that a bunch of people who deal with money all day are acting like it’s some kind of tragedy that government is about to default on a subject of, yes, money, and it’s important to them because in the end, they’re not getting what they want, which is money.

To the non-banker, or person without major wads of cash, an issue of  money is unimportant, so they’re not really going to care. Sure, you can argue that it will affect them in the long run, as the money markets to eventually affect everyone, but I’m sometimes wondering about that as well, because I have this sneaking suspicion that even if everything that had to do with profit was destroyed, people would still be doing what they normally do, and people would still be out there working, making things and getting things done.

Strangely enough, if you think about it, if our government collapsed financially, the chances of it collapsing politically are not guaranteed. Sure, money wouldn’t be the foundation of the every day decisions, but politics would, and unfortunately we’ve become a finance driven system, to where our very foundation appears to be about money. Not every government is really like that, and in the end, if the strings that tie government and money together were to collapse, I’m not sure it would really be all that bad. Granted, a lot of people right now would probably suffer, and we’d hear all sorts of doom and gloom until people woke up and realized that money really doesn’t make the world go around. People, cooperation and food does. Money just makes it easy to forget that.

But we will never get back to that foundation because someone will panic enough to cause some kind of last minute compromise and the “crisis” will be averted. At least until the next one. And we’ll kick a few more cans down the road.

Is anyone else getting a little tired of the kicking the can down the road analogy? Yeah, it’s getting kind of old.